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By Dave CollinsASSOCIATED PRESS • Monday January 14, 2013 8:15 AM

NEWTOWN, Conn. — Talk about Sandy Hook Elementary School is turning from last month’s massacre
to the future, with differing opinions on whether students and teachers should ever return to the
building where a gunman killed 20 first-graders and six educators.

Some Newtown residents say the school should be demolished and a memorial built on the property
in honor of those killed on Dec. 14. Others think the school should be renovated and the areas
where the killings occurred removed. That’s what happened at Columbine High School in Littleton,
Colo., after the 1999 mass shooting there.

Those appear to be the two prevailing proposals as the community begins discussing the school’s
fate. A public meeting on the building’s future drew about 200 people to Newtown High School
yesterday afternoon, with another meeting set for Friday. Town officials also are planning private
meetings with the victims’ families to get their input.

Yesterday’s meeting was an emotional gathering, with many speaking in favor of keeping the
school. Although opinions were mixed, most agreed that the Sandy Hook children and teachers should
stay together. They’ve been moved to a school building about

7 miles away that has been renamed Sandy Hook Elementary School.

“I have two children who had everything taken from them,” said Audrey Bart, who has two children
at Sandy Hook who weren’t injured in the shooting. “The Sandy Hook Elementary School is their
school. It is not the world’s school. It is not Newtown’s school. We cannot pretend it never
happened, but I am not prepared to ask my children to run and hide. You can’t take away their
school.”

But fellow Sandy Hook parent Stephanie Carson said she couldn’t imagine sending her son back
there.“I know there are children who were there who want to go back,” Carson said. “But the reality
is, I’ve been to the new school where the kids are now, and we have to be so careful just walking
through the halls. They are still so scared.”

Mergim Bajraliu, a senior at Newtown High School, attended Sandy Hook, and his sister is a
fourth-grader there. He said the school should stay as it is, and a memorial for the victims should
be built there.

“We have our best childhood memories at Sandy Hook Elementary School, and I don’t believe that
one psychopath — who I refuse to name — should get away with taking away any more than he did on
Dec 14,” he said.

Police said Adam Lanza, 20, killed his mother at the home they shared in Newtown before opening
fire with a semiautomatic rifle at the school and killing himself as police arrived.

Residents of towns where mass shootings occurred have grappled with the same dilemma.

Columbine High School, where two student gunmen killed 12 schoolmates and a teacher, reopened
several months afterward. Crews removed the library, where most of the victims died, and replaced
it with an atrium.

Virginia Tech converted a classroom building where a student gunman killed 30 people in 2007
into a peace-studies and violence-prevention center.